Sophia Taylor, a George Mason University Honors College student, received the Community Choice Award on December 5 for her research on legislative framework concerning availability of museum resources and exhibits. protecting federally funded museums and historical exhibits.
The third-year anthropology major is also minoring in religious studies and museum studies. This research project is much aligned with Taylor’s interests in censorship.
Through the research, she is interested in developing a multidisciplinary legislative framework to examine how political censorship and other factors can affect the availability of museum resources and exhibits.
She said, “This is important because it has been happening since 1400 BCE. If you’ve seen the news, you know it is happening today still.”
This issue is deeply personal to Taylor, as she works for the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and she loves to study people. “Everyone has a right to access accurate historical knowledge,” she said.